CHANGES in primary and nursery school admission rules were formally agreed this week, after the Government's adjudicator rubber-stamped the U-turn by Hertfordshire County Council last month.

The council's education committee reinstated priority for siblings in admission rules at its meeting on July 12, after a parents' campaign against the previous rules, which favoured local children over siblings.

The council will now start a consultation process, discussing with parents ways to allocate places at popular oversubscribed schools, with a view to changing the rules for admissions in September 2002.

A council spokesman said: 'We need to look at all sides of the argument and consider all the potential problems in changing the rules; such as the transport difficulties of taking children to different schools in different locations.

'All this must be carefully considered in the context of the Government's requirement and the law.'

Details of the wider consultation process will be published in September this year, after a series of discussions with parent groups.

First Steps Action Group spokesman Katy Fleet, who met education officers at County Hall yesterday (Thursday), said the key to making any new rules work was better and clearer information.

She said: 'It took a group of parents working incredibly hard for three months to show the council the rules would not work. I don't think councillors anticipated the strength of public opinion.

'I am very disappointed that they weren't able to get it right but now we have to look forward. They have to look at the issue more closely.'

Liberal Democrat education spokesman Ivor Ambrose said the council had to be flexible in its arrangements for admission rules.

He said: 'If you are a parent with two children, you will want rules that favour sibling priority, but if you only have one child, you will not want to find another child has been given priority for a school place because he or she has a brother or sister at the school.

'We have to try to get a set of rules that are fair for the most people and try to see if we can adjust them when we find difficulties.'

Rules were originally changed to give children living nearest an oversubscribed school priority for places over younger brothers and sisters of pupils already at the school, which, the action group said, would force parents to make children late for school and break links between schools and parents.

We have to try a totally different approach